Poseidon vs Hades

Recap

You pretty much know the story. Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus. All bros. But one of them got yanked in the Dickens.

And what’s really cool about last night’s game, was that there are three undefeated teams remaining in Summer League. Two of them played each other last night. (It would’ve been cooler if Zeus was the third, to go along with my narrative here. So I blame you Lu Wang.)

Battle of the undefeateds. I love when this happens later in the season. So much drama. If only Don Macatangay decided this game was worth live streaming. Choices.

Totally useless, but this is a sticker you can buy of Poseidon and Hades called Bro Gods.

When I Google, I Google deep.

Okay, enough silliness. Time to get to the game. Here’s Joy Park-Thomas of Hades with the story, with an assist from David Reed:

Going into tonight’s game, Hades and Poseidon were both undefeated. Don’s scouting report, I mean, live stream of the Poseidon v Ares game, showed Alex Carey is not nearly as gimpy as he pretends to be, but that hardly matters when all of their players are speed demons. Even though they were down a handful of subs, they played like it wasn’t no thang.

On their first defensive point, they invoked the power of Prometheus, taking our Fish to swim in Poseidon’s waters. This had us worried, especially when Fish was bearing down on Armand in the end zone. But Armand snagged the disc first, thus bringing Fish back to the dark side.

Poseidon ran off three more points in a row, taking the lead 4-2. This was not a good trend for us. But with fewer subs, the long points were wearing on them a little. By 6-5 us, we were back in the game and took the half 8-7.

For much of the game, Poseidon’s Lish and Alex put it to Jason and Remy long, and everyone gave it to Jake under AND long because he’s tireless like that. On Hades’ part, Meg, David, and Ivana handled the disc upfield, while Fish and Annie always seemed to find each other in the mix.

At 12-11, Poseidon had once again taken the lead. Then Hades tied it up and invoked the power of Aura, bringing out all the hats in my closet. (No one tell my mom this is where three of her sun hats went!) Hades’ Chuck Bender got a sweet hat D with my straw rice-picker, and we converted to take the lead 13-12.

Everyone battled ferociously to the very end: 15-13 Hades. Hard fought, and great spirited.

And because it was Wednesday, we went to Joxer Daly’s for karaoke. Andy sang Erin’s favorite song. David Reed showcased his convincing falsetto while belting out Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, Alex and Jake were the liveliest duo ever and Alex has lots of video to prove it, and I really should stop picking songs that are faster than I can wrap my words around.

too sober to write a reedcap, so feel free to throw as much flair in yours as you want.

just make sure to give maaaaaad props to Poseidon for

A) Jake and another one of their athletic guys backing off a swilly throw (that i think they easily could’ve gotten the D and made the difference in the game) to avoid a dangerous play with a female on our team. one on Nay, and another occurence

B) showing up in larger numbers than us to the bar, and going strong after an undefeated match-up loss, shorthanded.

seriously this was such a good bounce back from our last game.

I gotta give props to Reed. He let me pick any song in the entire karaoke book at Joxer’s, and that book has every song ever made practically. I pulled out the James McAvoy from Last King of Scotland when he spins the globe and points randomly saying “Wherever it lands, you go.” I randomly picked Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. It could not have landed on a more ludicrous choice. And Reed did not back down from the challenge. The guy said that was the first time anyone ever sang that song at Joxer’s. History made people. History made.

Speaking of history, Hades’ win now makes them 5-0. There’s only one other undefeated team left, and that is Hestia. The two are not scheduled to play each other, meaning it’s entirely possible we could have two teams finish undefeated which has never happened before in Summer League history.

And now, from Poseidon’s side, here’s Alex Carey:

it was a battle of the undefeated teams. Poseidon Versus Hades. I frantically texted people on their team trying to ascertain whether or not they had numbers, they did, i even tried to convince a few of them not to go, to no avail. they had just about everyone. Meanwhile our team was struggling on the numbers side. I think we ended up with 7 guys, which actually isnt too bad. but we definitely had to yell at the side line more than once, need 2 more guys, need 1 more girl.

Going into the game both teams had nearly the same records with almost the same point diff. However, our strength of schedule had been a little different. Poseidon had played opponents that were a combined 13-10, hades had played opponents a combined 7-15. A pretty big difference. This made a me feel pretty good going into tonight. Being short handed I felt like a loss was inevitable, but we sure didn’t play that way. We started on offense, a real sloppy point, drops from both teams, bad decisions, etc. We eventually punched it in, but if every point was going to be that long, we were in for a rough night. I think the second point, on defense Poseidon used the power, we stole fish and made him guard armand. i certainly didn’t want to. We had some great pressure defense and we forced a huck from reed to armand, a yard from the back of the endzone, armand snatches it between fish and myself. The power failed. However, it threw off their subbing rotation, and that was really our only goal.

From here on out, the teams nearly traded points, i dont think anyone went up by more than 2, hades took half 8-7.

It was some time around half that Hades started to punish Annie by throwing not so good throws that forced her to make big plays. Both ended up being called back because no one had perspective on one and the other was just so close it was hard to call one way or another.

Jason Dobruck was skying everyone tonight, on offense and on defense, it was a pleasure to throw floaty crap to him all night. Ivana and Nay were holding it down on the dump schwing breaks, i kept yelling no breaks, it kept getting broken. Love Nay’s lefty flick. Danny Le, Juan Ocampo, Fish and Armand were making my life hell. I literally had to go to jake on our team and be like, hey man, i just can’t get open as the dump, its not happening. I proceeded to not get open and jake in a high stall was forced to throw crap to me, and i mostly stood there and watched it get D’d. I have a good first juke off my left leg, but if people don’t bite on it, i cant actually push hard off my next step, my right leg. start buying my fakes people. Speaking of fakes, i threw a backhand fake with fish guarding me, in an effort to close the gap, he bid, and i definitely didn’t throw it. threw to the open side again and ran up line for the easy dominator.

We had the lead late in the game, probably around 12-11, around here they used the hat power, im gonna say it was ineffective, because my forced huck was uncatchable by anyone on my team, it was also hit by a hat, but im not sure i count it. They converted and were eventually up 13-11. Then 13-12. 14-12. jake throws a blade to remy 14-13, still hope. Black punches it in for a nice sky by derek lay i think, 15-13. Excellent game all around, it was the most fun I’ve had in a summer league game since I lost to Texas last year. It is also the best ive felt since I have had my surgery, i like to think that offensively im now ranked as a 2nd rounder, defensively im ranked as a 4th rounder. I had several chances last night on D’s that I couldn’t quite close the gap on cause I was too slow.

Shout out to the joxers crew, my Physical Therapist was even there, Jake and I sung “I believe in a thing called love” The Darkness, Don and I did a super tramp number that we had no business singing, Sonja, all the way from the JAMS fields, sung the Moulin Rouge elephant love medley with me. All of this begs the question, where was the rest of HEPHAESTUS and Demeter? Brach told me he was going if I bought a pitcher. i only spent 30 on drinks last night, so clearly we were missing out on some people. btw, I cant stand these tickets they give you at joxers, i dont want to hold onto your ticket while im drinking. Pro tip- take a picture of it with your phone, and then just show them the picture throughout the night.

Wise words. Although don’t you have pockets to put that in?

Either later this week, or next week, Alex will be releasing his mid-season power rankings. I can’t wait.

I know you’re also wondering how the powers have been faring thus far. Since we’re at the halfway point in the league roughly, let’s take a look.

Themis, the power to overturn any call, went 3-3 in Week 1 for a 50% success rate.

Mnemosyne, the power to reverse the pull, went 11-5 in Weeks 1 & 2 for a 69% success rate.

Helios, the running power, went 15-3 in Weeks 2 & 3 for an 83% success rate.

Venue

Results

I wonder what the % offense converts without using powers. I’m not so sure that the running power is OP.

The reverse pull and running power are the only ones you would use on offense, and it might just be due to small sample size that the %s are so different. 1 extra success by the pull power and 1 extra fail by the running power puts the 2 at basically the same success rate.

The stall count, hat power, and take a player would generally be used on D and they seem to be all right at 50% for this small sample size.